Blender Canvas 007 — It Doesn’t Have To Be Perfect blendercanvas.com » Podcast

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First of all, I want to apologize for last week's episode.  It had been some time since I had tried to record a podcast episode, and I wasn't as ready as I could have been with what I wanted to say.  That, plus the fact I was nervous, was part of why I kept "um-ing" and "ah-ing".

But that leads into today's topic -- it doesn't have to be perfect.  In fact, it most likely won't be.  But that is how we learn.

If you are brand new to Blender, you'll feel keenly just how rough your image is.  As you get better, you'll show some work to your friends which will amaze them, but to those who are in 3D, they might think it's not that great.  Just remember that even those "experts" at modeling, texturing, posing, animating, and rendering had to start somewhere.  Don't be afraid to share an image.  While some may give you a hard time, there are those of us out there who still remember what it was like to be new and are willing to share tips and advice and hopefully at least a few of us won't make you feel like your question, or your artwork, is beneath our notice.

So why might we want to release an imperfect image?  It's a great idea to get some feedback from someone, particularly if you are feeling something is off.  Sometimes, we get so close to our own material and we intuitively can tell that something is off, but we can't quite figure out what it is.  Often, taking that step of sharing it for feedback can be just what we need to push an average image into a great one.  When I did my wine glasses on a rack image, I went through 3 or 4 versions before I settled on the final image, mainly from checking out the feedback I got on things that I could do to improve it.  And that last image I did is way better than the first, with just a few changes!

Regardless of how you do on a project, when it is finished, it can be helpful to review how things went and how they turned out.  As a server, I learned to do a 3 step analysis of how things went with a given table, particularly when things didn't go as well as I would like.  Though I first discovered this process to help me improve when I found myself starting to consistently get low tips, after some time, I realized that this same 3 step process would help not only my serving results, but just about any other area I wanted to improve as well.

The first step in the process is to ask What could have gone better?  It doesn't matter what went wrong.  Sometimes it was things I could control.  Sometimes it wasn't.  At this point, it doesn't matter.  I'm just trying to find anything that could have gone better.  When it comes to waiting tables, it might be something like the kitchen took 30 minutes to cook something that normally takes them 10 minutes because of a large party on the other side of the restaurant or it could be because a table asked me for multiple refills and had to flag me down several times for something I kept forgetting to bring them.  For our 3D work, perhaps it is a capability deficiency on the part of Blender or perhaps  we had too much glossiness in the shader mix.  At this stage, it's only important to note what could have gone better, what ever that might be.

The second step is to ask Which of these do I have control over?  I often find that most of the time, things that could have gone better are things that I have at least some degree of control over.  For instance, with my serving, I don't have any control over how long it took to cook the food, but I do have some influence of being aware of a large party and reassuring the guest that their food is coming.  I also have control over noticing the drinks need refilling before they ask and remembering to bring things they've asked for.  In our 3D work, while we don't have control over the capabilities of Blender (at least... not "in the moment"), perhaps we do have control on finding a "work around" hack or solution that will do what we want,